New Map: Earth+

[Andy6474b]

Well thanks to Dacks excellent Terraform program Ive spent many hours playing civ this week when I should have been working

Anyhow Ive created a new map, and I figured some of you might enjoy it. Its Earth but with some modifications. I wont try to claim its a balanced or particularly good map, but its a new map, its more interesting than the run of the mill random maps, and even if you also have terraform to make your own maps it has the advantage that you dont know exactly what it looks like the first time you play it. (Speaking of which I really hope Dack adds a random map generator to Terraform!)

7 civs, Prince Level (yeah I know thats easy for all of you but thats the level I like to play at).

Enjoy...
View attachment 137641

 

[Dack]

...Anyhow Ive created a new map...

I Looked at your map. I have one observation
Some comments on the world you created:

The following is from:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2754714&postcount=27
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2755516&postcount=30
The game its self does not allow cities to be build the in most
northern and southern two rows. The game is not programmed to deal with
cities that have an area that the city controls that hangs over the edge of the playing area.

If you notice worlds created by the game never have land in columns 78, 79
(the east most two) and also columns 0, 1, 2 (the west most three). You can
build in columns 78, 79, 0, 1 but you get funny results

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/edgecities.zip

note: The stripe denotes columns 79 and 0

...a random map generator to Terraform!...

Somewhere I have stated that a random map generator was the ultimate goal of TerraForm. It is the reason that I wrote it but I have yet designed an algorithm. Just casually think about it seem like quite a project. The outline of the Islands; the length and direction or rivers; and the elements of topography; Do you have a decision table and a logic flow table?

[ATTACH]137641[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]

Does any one know what the ATTACH command does. It was at the end of the quoted text.

 

[Alex Johnson]

Attach is the tag used to attach a file to the post. In his case, the zip file of the save game.

The creation of random worlds is an interesting topic. One I'd like to help examine. I know nothing of Terraform, so I wouldn't help you code it, but I can code the algorithms as a stand alone function and discuss the methods we could use. In high school when I first played Civ Dos, my friend and I created programs that created random worlds. At the time they didn't create very good planets, but I would be willing to bet I could do a lot better now that I'm 30 and have been programming for 20 years.

 

[Dack]

... my friend and I created programs that created random worlds. ...

This floods my mind with questions:
Where you able to integrate this worlds into CIV DOS?

Coding the algorithms is not the real problem. Coming up with one that can produce random worlds given some sort of parameters is.

There are twelve terrain types: Ocean, Forest, swamp, plain, tundra, river, grassland, jungle, hill, mountain, desert, and arctic. The area is 50 by 80 but rows 0,1,2 and 47,48,49 make up the Arctic and Antarctic, and columns 0,1,2 and 78,79 are always Oceans. Also there should be no more than 14 major islands and some number of ones with 1 or 2 squares.

I would say the first step would be to just produce random islands of any terrain type. A start would be just an array of 50 by 80, zero for land, and one for sea. After that one could flesh out the land types and rivers.

Of course this should be controlled by something like the way the Civilization customize function would. Parameters to control the relative size and number of islands and their topography.

Lots to think about.

 

[Alex Johnson]

No, we never integrated into Civ. We were hoping to make Civ-like games but were most interested in the mechanics of creating random worlds that look believable instead of random (no alternating water-land-water-land situations).

I think I can work with those constraints. I'll give it some thought over the weekend.

 

[Andy6474b]

Back when I was in Uni I often started trying to write my own civ like games on my Amiga, and later on PC. It always started with the map generator. Id spend lots of time tweaking it to produce interesting looking maps and worlds.

Then Id lose interest, or have to get back to my studies or whatever, and thats as far as it would ever get.

Actually, Dack, heres what would be really great - How about an import feature that lets TerraForm read in a map in a simple standard format (perhaps a textfile using different numerals or letters for the various terrain types?) and uses that produce a civ map file.

Then I can bang up my own map generator and have it output the textfile, use TF to convert it to a civ savegame (and further manually touch up the map if I feel so inclined).

Whats the implication of having more than 14 major islands?

 

[Dack]

Whats the implication of having more than 14 major islands?

The Islands are numbered 1 to 15 in order of their size. After 14 all the remaining islands are number 15. I assume that this number is used to regulate wonders that work only on the island they are built on (this is an untested hypothesis). The Arctic and Antarctic are set to number 1 along with the largest island.